RVers Find ‘Full-Time’ Campsites For Summer

Carolyn Underwood does not consider herself to be outdoorsy, yet she camped for six months last year.

As reported by the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times Free Press, that’s what she calls it — “camping.” But she and her husband, Steve, are hardly roughing it in their fully equipped RV at Chester Frost Park. They’ve got a TV, Wi-Fi and a pork roast cooking in the crockpot.

“Gasoline’s high and we can come up here, and it’s a pretty cheap vacation,” Underwood says, sitting at the covered picnic table outside her RV. The golden bangles on her wrist catch sunlight as she taps on her iPhone, which is plugged into the vehicle with an extension cord.

With their real house only about seven miles away in Hixson, the Underwoods swing by two or three times a week to mow the lawn and check on the cat. They’ve been coming here for about eight years now, usually from spring to early fall, and they’re part of a small community of long-term campers at the park.

The Underwoods are hardly unusual. At several parks around Chattanooga, including Chester Frost and Possum Creek RV Park and Campground in Soddy-Daisy, when the weather gets warm, dozens of folks pull up their RVs or expandable campers to campsites on the water and homestead for the summer.